Ukraine “falls into trap” in Kursk
The Battle of Kursk was still going on very tensely as both sides increased their attacks on the village of Novoivanovka in order to gain the upper hand in the next attacks.
In the context of Mr. Trump's election as the new US president, discussions have begun within Ukraine about the possibility of the Ukrainian Army withdrawing from Kursk soon. Initially, Ukrainian lawmaker Mariana Bezuglaya said that the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (VSU), General Alexander Syrsky, was preparing for the withdrawal, but the Ukrainian Army quickly refuted this information.
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| In the context of Mr. Trump's election as the new president of the United States, internal discussions within Ukraine have begun about the possibility that the Ukrainian Army will soon withdraw from Kursk. Photo: New York Times |
Military observer Gennady Alekhin also said that so far, he has not seen Mr. Syrsky withdrawing troops from Kursk, but on the contrary, Ukrainian reinforcements are entering Kursk. He believes that the Ukrainian army may retreat due to heavy losses in some frontline areas, but they will definitely resolutely defend the city of Sudzha.
Notably, according to a report by AFP, Mr. Trump's team has proposed a preliminary plan, with the content that as long as Ukraine agrees not to join NATO for the next 20 years, the US can continue to provide weapons to this country. According to this plan, a demilitarized zone will be established along the current front line in eastern Ukraine, controlled by peacekeeping forces.
Regardless of the situation, fierce fighting is taking place in the Kursk area, and the Ukrainian Army is counterattacking very strongly. According to information from observer Mikhail Zvinchuk and the Telegram channel on November 7, the Russian Northern Corps is accelerating the destruction of the remaining forces of the Ukrainian group surrounded in the large forest south of Orgovka.
Perhaps realizing that their remaining forces were unlikely to hold out, Ukrainian reinforcements intensified their attacks on Novoivanovka, launching four mechanized assaults on the village in one day. At the same time, Ukrainian forces in Leonidovo began counterattacking Russian forces on the northern outskirts of the village, trying to prevent the Russians from further closing the encirclement to the east.
However, due to the Russian advantage in firepower and the recent addition of a tank unit, all Ukrainian attacks were repelled. The Ukrainians lost at least one platoon, two US-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and several armored vehicles.
After repelling the Ukrainian attacks, Russia began to advance east of Novoivanovka. Currently, most of the village is under absolute control of the Russian army, with only a few buildings remaining in the east and the eastern suburbs where the two sides are currently fighting.
To eliminate potential threats, Russian troops are actively bombing Ukrainian troop concentrations in Sumy. According to a video released by reporters on November 6, Russian troops destroyed a cluster of Ukrainian armored vehicles concentrated in Sumy.
Many elite Kiev soldiers were killed.
According to MK, Russia launched an attack that wiped out an entire platoon of Ukrainian troops trained “according to NATO standards” using the TOS-1A “thermobaric fire” system, also known as Solntsepek.
This is a weapon system that was once compared by Popular Mechanics magazine (USA) to a tactical nuclear weapon, with the ability to cause damage in an area of up to 40,000 m2, equivalent to the area of 6 football fields combined.
MK said that the regiment that was just eliminated by Russia was the elite force of the 77th Independent Airborne Brigade, the Ukrainian armed forces operating in the direction of Kupyansk (Kharkiv province) - where President Vladimir Putin just announced the siege of 15,000 Ukrainian troops.
The soldiers in this platoon are trained according to NATO methods and are considered “one of the most professional combat units” of the Ukrainian army.
The 77th Brigade was formed in the summer of 2022 in Zhitomir, and was mobilized in the Ukrainian army's counteroffensive in Kharkiv that same year. However, due to significant losses in personnel and equipment, the 77th Brigade had to withdraw for reorganization.
At that time, the 77th Brigade had only 25-30% of its strength left. By August 2022, the 77th Brigade had been replaced on the battlefield by the 115th Independent Mechanized Brigade of Ukraine.
However, three months later, the paratroopers of the 77th Brigade were suddenly brought back to Kupyansk. It is unclear how the brigade was able to be restored in such a short time.
Currently, Russia is intensifying its offensive in Kharkiv. Perhaps this is why the Ukrainian command specifically sent the most elite platoon of the 77th Brigade to this area.
However, what Kiev did not expect was that their professional forces suffered heavy losses after just one Russian attack. According to MK, the Ukrainian command did not have a solution to disperse the soldiers but let them cluster in the same building.
“ Due to being hit by a Russian thermobaric missile, the entire Ukrainian platoon was killed ,” MK said.
Ukraine stops Russian armor near Kurakhove
Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Oleksandr Syrskyi said that his country's soldiers recently continued to stop the Russian attack near the city of Kurakhove.
Mil.in.ua quoted General Syrskyi's post on the Telegram social network as saying that the Russian army had mobilized an armored column to penetrate the Ukrainian army's defense line in the village of Maksymilianivka, east of the city of Kurakhove.
Ukrainian reconnaissance systems then tracked the movement of the enemy convoy and provided coordinates to artillery and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to carry out an attack on the convoy.
“ The skills of Ukrainian soldiers left the enemy with no chance of victory ,” Syrskyi wrote on Telegram, posting a video of the Ukrainian 46th Airborne Brigade intercepting an enemy armored column.
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